Guantanamo Inmate Database: Ruhal Ahmed

McClatchy Newspapersby Matthew SchofieldJune 15, 2008

TIPTON, England — Ruhal Ahmed swept into his new living room full of
energy. He tucked a blanket around a piece of inflatable plastic
furniture to make his temporary life look more permanent, held up a
hand to pause a conversation and stabbed at a cell phone.

"Yes, mate, I understand, but I can't go to the bank and say, 'I'll just pay you later,' can I?" he said. "I need the rent now."

He hung up and murmured: "Dealing with our tenants," looked around
the room and added: "You hungry? I'm starving. Let me cook something.
You eat bhatura?"

Six years ago, Ahmed worked anonymously in a British post office.
Today, he's famous, one of the so-called "Tipton Three," three longtime
friends who were featured in a widely viewed documentary film, "The
Road to Guantanamo."

It's a story that begins as an outing and turns into three years of
captivity, including an account of being stuffed into a truck trailer
that Afghan fighters shot full of air holes and where many prisoners
died.

These days, Ahmed's energy is unnerving; he's a tiger trapped in a
too-small cage. The world is watching, and he's pacing back and forth
with nothing else to do. He's an oddity, this famous former Guantanamo
detainee.

In his living room, a Silver Bear award statuette from the Berlin
Film Festival, a reminder of the film, rested on an otherwise empty
bookshelf as he retold the story of how he and two friends ended up as
prisoners in Cuba.

Fame hasn't made his life easier, although it's brought him some
income and a new television and satellite television setup that he
flips through excitedly, "Newest stuff, man, newest. Amazing."

When he returned to Britain in 2004 after two years in Guantanamo,
he was greeted on the main street of this old mill town by an effigy in
Guantanamo orange — the color of its prisoners' garb — hanging from a
lamppost. A pinned-on note warned, "Tipton Taliban will die."

Since he's returned, he thinks that people shun him. His wife,
Shaeda — his high school sweetheart, who waited for him while he was
jailed — was disowned by her parents after she married him.

She supports him. "He's not much of a cook," she joked, "but in time, it will all be all right."

Ahmed wonders.

"When I apply for jobs, people see the gap, 2001 to 2004, in my
experience," he said. "They ask about it. Am I supposed to lie? They'll
find out, sooner or later. So I tell the truth, which is when they say,
'We've got your information. We'll be in touch.' Sometimes they are, to
tell me no."

Ahmed's story began with a pre-wedding adventure with his friends
Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal. They arrived in Pakistan in 2001, three
weeks before Rasul's wedding date.

Just before the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan, a cleric in Pakistan
called for people to help deliver food, medicine and clothes to
Afghanistan.

The three friends thought it sounded like a great trip. One week
away, seeing a new country on the edge of war, experiencing life under
a Muslim government, then back with a story to tell and in plenty of
time for the wedding.

"We were bored, and it sounded exciting," Ahmed said.

He knows that to an outsider and with the benefit of hindsight, the
reasons for going seem weak and suspicious. "Come on, man, if we knew
how it was going to turn out, of course we wouldn't have done it," he
said. "Back then it seemed like a good idea."

The United States began its invasion of Afghanistan, and one week
turned into many weeks. The group from the mosque boarded buses and
crossed into Afghanistan, where it switched to vans.

After days with little to do, the three Britons asked to return to
Pakistan. Instead, they were driven to Kunduz, near a Taliban camp that
soon was surrounded by Afghan northern alliance fighters allied with
the U.S. While he was there, he said, he learned how to use an AK-47.
He and his friends then joined hundreds of fighters in a mass
surrender, thinking that this would be their best chance of getting
into Western hands.

Instead, they were held for two months in horrific conditions, then handed — they think they were sold — to Americans.

They were held for a few months in Kandahar, during which, Ahmed
said, he was struck, kicked and accused of belonging to al Qaida. Then
they were taken to Guantanamo.

There, he said, interrogations were almost constant. Guards struck
him, kicked him, pushed him around and forced him to remain in a
painful crouch for hours.

He said that no one wanted to hear his version of the little
adventure. Interrogators, he said, told him that he'd been seen in a
video standing beside 9-11 terrorist pilot Mohamed Atta and Osama bin
Laden, and that security officials considered him among the world's
most dangerous terrorists. They showed him a video in which he
supposedly appeared.

He noted the date on the film, and said they could check his work
records in Tipton and see that he'd been working half a world away from
where the video was made. Their response, he said, was that he'd
probably faked the work records.

Then, as suddenly as his ordeal had started, guards took him out of
his cell, marched him to a waiting British military plane and sent him
home. They gave no explanation and no apology.

He said that he was told to sign a confession and acknowledge that
U.S. security forces might take him again at any moment, but he
refused. British anti-terrorism forces have shown little interest in
him, which he thinks illustrates that there never was any proof of the
accusations against him.

British officials and security experts said they didn't know why
Ahmed visited Pakistan and Afghanistan. But they said he's not under
suspicion in the United Kingdom.

Asked to look back on his lost years, Ahmed said that he'd rather look forward.

"Listen, it was two years of my life, and it was horrible, but I
lived through it, and all I want to do is get on with the rest of my
life," he said. "I'll never be able to forget, but maybe I will move
away from Guantanamo."